


the war is over (and we are beginning)

by ceevee



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Miscommunication, Moving On, Oral Sex, Post-Battle Sex, Post-Finale, Rebuilding, Vaginal Sex, minor D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26624485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceevee/pseuds/ceevee
Summary: Minerva and Duck save the world, rebuild Kepler, have lots of awesome, life-affirming sex, fall in love, and figure out what to do with the rest of their lives....more or less in that order.
Relationships: Duck Newton & Jane Newton, Juno Divine & Duck Newton, Minerva/Duck Newton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this on 9/23/20, one year after the Amnesty finale dropped, so: happy Amnestyversary! 
> 
> Thanks to Quill, for being the love of my life and listening to Adventure Zone with me all these years. 
> 
> Thanks to [Rhinocio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinocio/pseuds/Rhinocio), for looking at an early draft of this late last year. This final version is unbetaed, because, honestly? It's six months into quar and I can't be bothered. 
> 
> Thanks to Justin and the rest of the McElboys, for creating this world for us to play in. 
> 
> And thanks to the Ducknerva server. I love you guys.
> 
> (ETA: and thank you for whoever it is who made the very first Waynerva spotify playlist, for giving me the title to this fic. Title comes from 'in our bedroom after the war' by Stars, which I probably listened to a thousand times over the course of writing this fic.)

When Duck and Mama tumble through the portal into Billy’s old room in the Cryptonomica, dark and still smelling of stale pizza, Minerva follows. She’s on Duck’s heels like there’s nowhere else she’d think to be, and Duck doesn’t have time to ask her if she’s sure before Mama swears and turns back toward the portal.

“Hold the gate,” she says, sharp and urgent. “There’s people that need to get to the other side.”

“Okay, but you better hurry,” Billy says, and Mama whirls back around. 

“Minerva, how fast can you get to the Lodge?”

Minerva doesn’t bother answering, just turns on her heel and runs. The front door of the Cryptonomica slams against the siding as she bursts into the street, Duck and Mama hot on her heels. 

The next twenty minutes are a blur. Duck grabs the keys of Ned’s weird van and he and Mama gun it through the streets, grabbing Slyphs left and right. Most of the folks that want to go back are the ones Duck never really knew; maybe a third of the Lodge decides to stay. Barclay makes it very clear that nothing Mama says will convince him to leave. Duck thinks Jake stays, too. He breathes through the ache in his breastbone, focusing on clearing rooms and hustling folks down the mountain instead of dwelling on the fact that he’ll never see Aubrey again.

He catches Minerva by the arm as she sprints out of the lodge, robes flaring wildly behind her. 

“Wayne Newton, we don’t have much time–”

“If you want to go with them, you can.”

Minerva blinks at him. Duck fidgets with the keys. 

“You’ve always got a place here, but–”

“Let’s go!” Mama barks, slamming the van door shut and slapping the roof. Duck shrugs, turning to climb into the driver’s seat. Minerva’s hand on his shoulder stops him. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Wayne Newton,” Minerva says. “Now. Let’s finish this.” 

And sure enough, when the portal blinks closed, Minerva’s still at Duck’s side.

Mama looks at the two of them in the dim light of the Cryptonomica, rubbing the back of her neck. She’s got dirt and blood on her face, hair falling out of her braid. She looks about how Duck feels. “Take the day off, y’hear?” 

Duck snorts. “Only if you do, too.” 

Mama’s lips twitch into a smile. It’s lopsided, a little hesitant, like she can’t quite remember how the expression’s supposed to work. “Yeah, that’s fair. Meet you tomorrow at the Lodge?” 

“We’ll be there,” Minerva says, and Duck just barely stops himself from looking at her. Mama looks between the two of them for a moment.

“We did it,” she tells them evenly. “It’s done.” 

It doesn’t sound right in her mouth, like it’s something she doesn’t quite know how to believe yet. It’s alright. Duck isn’t there yet either. 

She starts walking up the hill, and for a minute, Duck watches her go. It’s dim and gray outside, the quiet hour before the birds start to sing. He can smell smoke on the breeze– something, somewhere is burning. For half a second, Duck considers going and finding the source, joining whatever cleanup efforts have doubtlessly already begun. The fight might be over, but there’ll be work to do, now that they’re alive to see tomorrow. 

Minerva nudges his shoulder with her own, and the impulse fades. He’s tired down to his bones. His car is probably still parked a half-mile from the Lodge. He's fought aliens and monsters and watched one of his best friends leave for another world forever, and, well. He saved the world. It can probably look after itself for another few hours.

When Duck turns toward home, Minerva follows. 

Duck lets Minerva into his apartment, flicking on the lights in the kitchen as he shuts the door behind them. Outside, the sky is just starting to streak pink with dawn, but his windows face the wrong way; it’s pitch dark inside. If he trips over the damn cat now, he might not make it off the floor. 

“There’s, uh, there should be cereal in the cupboard,” he says, waving a hand toward the kitchen as he drops his keys on the counter. "I, uh, wasn't exactly thinking about groceries these last few days, so I don't have much in, but I– "

“Wayne Newton,” Minerva interrupts. He glances up. Minerva is right up in his space, crowding him up against the counter. Duck takes a step back and she follows him, steadies him as he bumps into the cabinet. He looks at her hand, curved around his hip, warm despite the morning’s chill. He looks back up at Minerva’s face. 

She’s just  _ looking  _ at him, something resolute in the set of her jaw. The rest of his sentence gets caught somewhere in his throat.

Minerva’s hand is still on his hip. 

Something in the back of his head crowds out the exhaustion, thrums back online. 

"I–" he starts again, and then Minerva seizes him by the front of his shirt and crushes her mouth against his.

There’s a split second where Duck thinks she’s lost her mind, that the stress of the battle and Reconciliation and the last couple of months has broken something loose inside her. Then she tilts her head, and Duck gets with the program. He’s off-balance, unprepared, but he leans into it, gets a hand on the back of her neck so he can maneuver them into something a little better than mashing their faces together. Minerva’s aggressive, eager; she bites at Duck’s lower lip and Duck makes a noise that can only really be called a yelp. She sucks at the same spot, a bit more gently, and that rips a moan out of Duck’s throat. 

It's a long, long moment before Minerva breaks the kiss, disengaging while still keeping Duck boxed in against the counter. Duck sucks in a ragged breath as he tries to get his bearings. 

"Or, okay, we can do this, too," he says. Minerva blinks at him owlishly before visibly rallying, shaking herself. Her cheeks are flushed, and they flush further as she notices their position. Minerva relinquishes her grip on the front of his shirt and smoothes it down awkwardly.

“Duck Newton, I did not mean to alarm–” she starts. Duck cuts her off, leaning up to press a hard kiss to her mouth. Minerva holds still for it, shoulders held tight with tension. When he looks up at her, she looks– torn. Like she’s a heartbeat away from vanishing. Duck clings to her, just a little.

“Hey! Not alarmed!” he says. He’s aiming for reassuring, but it comes out a little frantic. “This is good! Let’s do this!” He pulls her back down toward him, and this time Minerva comes willingly.

After a second or two, Minerva settles, relaxing into the kiss and returning it with renewed fervor. Duck can feel her grinning against his mouth, surprised and pleased. He nips at the corner of her mouth, and she lets out the softest noise Duck has ever heard from her, something breathy and eager that Duck immediately tries to make happen again. Shit, a corner of Duck's brain moves 'Hear That Sound x1,000,000' up to the very top of his To Do list. 

Her hands fist in the front of his shirt again, crushing him against her. He lets her pull him where she wants him, trusting her to take his weight as they shift. His neck is craned up toward her and his back is digging into the counter. It's fucking great. He deepens the kiss, sucking on her lower lip, and when his tongue brushes against hers, it sends sparks down his spine. He tightens his grip on her waist, strains upward, chokes back a noise when she pulls away.

Her eyes are dark, and there’s something hungry in the way she looks at him, like he might disappear if she blinks. There's a second or two where she and Duck just stare at each other, breathing hard. She releases her grip on Duck's shirt, and he almost falls into the counter, taking his hand off her to catch himself.

"Take this off, Duck Newton," Minerva demands abruptly, gesturing vaguely at his shirt. Duck scrambles to comply, and he's barely gotten it over his head before they crash together again. His shirt drops to the floor, forgotten, as he gets his hands in her robe. Her clothes are torn from the battle, cut where she was nicked by claws and teeth and knives. He had barely noticed before, in the midst of everything else. Duck's heart pounds in his chest, adrenaline spiking through him ninety minutes too late. God, they had come so close to losing it all.

_ I'm with you till the end, Duck Newton. _

"Come on," he says against her mouth. "Bedroom." She makes a noise that's probably meant to signal agreement but sounds much more like a moan, and it completely derails Duck's train of thought. They make out in the kitchen until Duck’s dizzy with it, nerves buzzing at every place his skin touches hers. When he pulls away next, gasping for air, he presses his temple into the side of her face. Minerva, not to be deterred, tips her head a little lower to mouth at Duck's neck.

"Jesus," Duck gets out. "Minerva."

"Yes, Duck Newton?" Minerva says into Duck's collarbone. Her lips just brush against his skin, and Duck shudders, drops his head back. His hands flex on her hips, and they stutter forward in his grasp. All at once Duck is incredibly aware of how turned he is, making out in his kitchen as the sun rises on the first day after the end of the world. 

He laughs, just once, at how fucking weird his life is, and then he pulls Minerva in for another kiss because if he keeps laughing now, he might not stop. It's incredible how good she feels against his mouth. He kisses her again, again, again, and then he's moving, pushing at her shoulders and away from the counter.

“Bedroom," he repeats firmly, before he can get distracted again. She makes another affirmative noise. He nudges her across the kitchen, into the bedroom across the hall. The cat meows at him, somewhere in the living room, but he ignores her and slams the door behind them. 

Minerva doesn't quite tumble onto his bed, but it’s not the most graceful maneuver Duck’s ever seen her perform. Duck sprawls out beside her while she shrugs off her robes and takes the opportunity to acquaint himself with Minerva's chest. She's got scars across her collarbone and down across her sternum, raised lines that tell countless stories that Duck hasn’t heard. He traces one with a finger, and then with his tongue. Minerva hums in satisfaction, wrapping a hand around Duck's neck to keep him in place, which– wow, okay, Duck can get behind.

"What do you want?" he asks, flicking his eyes toward her face. The only light in the room comes from under the doorway, but Minerva’s eyes seem to glow. He can’t look away.

"I want whatever you want to give me, Duck Newton," she says, and— the way she says it, earnest as she’s always been— it throws Duck off balance. He doesn't quite know how to handle that, so he puts his mouth back on her breast to give himself time to think. It takes a few minutes, and he gets distracted by the way Minerva hisses between her teeth when he grazes his teeth across a nipple. 

"Okay," he says at last, leaning over to flip the switch on his bedside lamp. He rummages around in his nightstand's drawer, and his stomach drops. "Goddamn it," he says, heaving himself up to stare into the drawer with dismay. "I don't have any fucking condoms."

They look at each other in the dim light. Minerva is mostly out of her robes, bare save for some gym shorts that she probably stole out of his dresser before the fight. Duck’s only lost his shirt. The moment stretches out long enough that embarrassment starts to creep in. Duck can feel himself starting to blush. Then Minerva snorts, rolling her shoulders and shooting Duck a wry smile. 

"We're going to have to improvise," she says. "Take off your pants, Duck Newton, I feel under-dressed."

"Bossy," he mutters, biting back a grin. The tension vanishes as abruptly as it had appeared, and he rolls onto his back to shove his pants over his hips. Minerva pulls off her shorts while he's taking off his socks, and then he has six feet of naked woman rolling on her side to face him. He matches her, tipped on his side like they’re sharing a secret. She grins at him, wide and bright, and then she licks a stripe up her palm and wraps her hand around his dick. 

"Jesus fuck," Duck says, arm flailing until he catches a grip on her shoulder. It's a little dry and just on the right side of too tight, and it's fucking incredible. Minerva strokes him slowly, eyes fixed on Duck’s face as he spirals higher. Their noses are almost touching, Minerva's steady breathing a quiet counterpoint to Duck's ragged gasps and helpless noises. Duck kisses her, again and again and again. Minerva pulls away, licks her hand again. Duck thinks there might be lube under his bed, but right now it might as well be in Sylvain. 

He wedges his hand down into the tight space between them, nudges her legs apart, slides his fingers through the slick juncture between her thighs. Minerva’s hand stutters on his dick as he brushes against her clit. She's wet enough that Duck can slide two fingers into her with one smooth motion. He skates his fingers along the length of her, circling her clit a couple of times before pushing back in. It's awkward and cramped, Duck working with his non-dominant hand, but Minerva's hips buck against his hand and Duck grins, pushes himself upward to give him a little room to work. He crooks his fingers, and Minerva cries out, high and sharp. Duck pushes at her thigh gently, and she rolls to her back as her knees tip apart. She loses her grip on Duck in the process, but that’s alright: Duck’s on a Mission. 

"Duck Newton, I– Yes, yes, I–" She grinds into his hand, and Duck does his best to match the jerky rhythm of her hips. He slips a third finger into her, pushing in to the hilt. His thumb sweeps back and forth over her clit, and Minerva swears.

"Yeah, that's it," Duck says, crooking his fingers again, looking for the spot that made her shout. "C'mon, beautiful." The endearment drops off his tongue before he can catch it, but– Minerva is beautiful: the long line of her neck below him is beautiful, the faint scars speckled across her body are beautiful, the tattoos that are actually starting to glow as Minerva shakes apart are beautiful.

"I- I- Duck." Minerva curls in on herself, strung tight as a bow, and then she comes, loudly, clenching around Duck's hand. The markings on her scalp blaze with light for a split second, fading as she comes back down. She's incredible, eyes wide and teeth bared in a wild grin. It goes a long damn way to wiping out the shitshow of a week Duck has had. 

Duck works her through the aftershocks, fucking her slow and deep. Minerva keeps making these noises, low moans in the back of her throat that go straight to his dick. After a minute or two, Minerva bats at his arm, and he draws back, wiping his hand against the sheets absently. Minerva rolls onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow and reaching for him. 

She jacks him quickly, watching him watch her. Duck closes his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed, and then he drags them back open, because he doesn’t want to miss a second of this. His orgasm builds, sharp and urgent. He tilts his head toward her, kissing her desperately as he comes over her hand. He says her name into her mouth, her name and ‘thank you’ and ‘fuck’ and a riot of unintelligible noises that she pulls out of him with every stroke.. 

When she finally lets him go, Duck’s mind is blank with pleasure and exhaustion. “Thanks,” he says inanely, and Minerva snorts. She leans in to kiss him once more, and then she stretches, doing an undignified little wiggle that burrows her into Duck’s sheets.

"We were victorious, Duck Newton," she says, voice cracking over a yawn. "And now, we rest."

"Sounds good," Duck says. "You, uh, I can take the couch if– you look pretty comfortable and I, uh–" Minerva cracks open an eye to give him a look that very effectively conveys that he's being an idiot. "Or, okay. Yeah. I'm gonna go lock the door." He rolls off the mattress, pads barefoot through the apartment. He locks the door, deadbolts it. Feeds the cat, flicks off the lights.

Minerva's already asleep when he makes it back to the bedroom, even though he's maybe been gone forty-five seconds. He shuts the door– locks it, too, for good measure– and flicks off the lamp. He wedges himself in alongside Minerva. She makes a sleepy noise and throws an arm over him, so casually possessive that Duck can’t help but be charmed. 

He closes his eyes and falls asleep between one breath and the next, Minerva's hand splayed above his heart.

  
  


It’s light out, the next time Duck opens his eyes. Beside him, Minerva is snuffling gently into a pillow. Oh. 

Hey.

He had sex with Minerva. 

He stretches experimentally. The bone-deep exhaustion has been replaced by a more run-of-the-mill kind of ache, the kind of sore he usually is after hunts. 

There isn’t going to be ‘after hunts’ anymore, he muses. The fight’s done. Gate’s closed. Everything can go back to normal. 

It can’t, of course– Duck’s spent the last year with a bunch of people he's probably never gonna see again. Ned's dead, Aubrey and Thacker are in Sylvain. He’ll still see Mama, sure, but Mama's got the Lodge and everyone who stayed behind. The apartment is quieter than it's been in months, and it's nice, except for the fact that one of his best friends is now living on another planet and he might never see her again. 

Shit. He's gonna miss her.

Duck shakes his head, pulling himself upright. Aubrey chose Sylvain. Thacker too. 

Ned, well. What’s done is done. 

He swings one leg out of bed, and before he even touches the ground, Minerva’s head shoots up off the pillow. Her eyes lock onto Duck unerringly, her features twisted into a snarl. It'd probably be more intimidating if her cheek had fewer pillow marks crossing it.

"'s just me, Min," Duck says softly. "Just gonna go shower." Minerva's expression smooths out. She squints, eyes him up and down, and then grunts an affirmative before dropping like a rock back onto the pillow. Something warm and fond blooms behind Duck's ribs, despite the melancholy tugging him down. He pulls the covers back up over Minerva and then walks out of the room before he does something creepy like watch his former mentor drool onto a pillow.

He feeds the cat, only to remember as Kairi scampers away that he had already fed her that morning. She looks entirely too satisfied as she settles down for a mid-morning grooming. Duck scritches her fondly between the ears as he heads to the shower. He spends longer than he'd care to admit letting the hot water wash the Quell and the creepy alien spaceship down the drain.

He eats a bowl of cereal, tossing out the milk afterward because it’s definitely on the wrong side of the ‘best by’ date. After that, he rummages through the fridge for other things that need throwing out, and then he washes the dishes that have stacked up in the sink. God, there are going to be funerals, he realizes, hands covered in suds. There's no way they got through the fight against the Quell without losing anyone. How the hell are they going to explain this to anyone outside of Kepler? 

Kairi yowls at him, and Duck shakes himself. He scratches her between the ears until she’s satisfied, at which point she launches herself back off the counter. Standing here dwelling isn’t helpful. Mama said to take a day off, but Duck has never been someone who could just sit. 

_ Went for a walk, getting groceries, _ he scrawls on a piece of paper, because Minerva still hasn’t emerged from the bedroom. He pushes himself out the front door and down the road, into the quiet gray day. 

The corner store is quiet. The whole town is quiet, really– the main drag's like a ghost town. It’s six blocks to the store and Duck doesn’t see a soul. The corner store is unlocked, but nobody's at the register. There's a note scrawled on the back of an old flyer that’s been taped to the counter that just says 'TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, WE'LL FIGURE IT OUT LATER'. Someone else has left behind a piece of notebook paper, and a potential third person has produced a calculator; there are a few notes from people who have already stopped in for supplies. Duck grins. That’s Kepler for you. 

Duck grabs some milk, a pack of pop-tarts, some frozen meals with a smiling lady on the front of the package, a big bag of chips, a couple of apples because he feels guilty about the chips. Then he spends fifteen goddamn minutes in the pharmaceutical aisle trying to decide if he should pick up a pack of condoms.

What if last night– this morning– whatever. What if it was just a one-time thing? What if Minerva's people had post-battle sex, like, casually? What if he walked back through the door and Minerva was like 'Duck Newton, that was part of the knighting ceremony! We can't have sex again!" and then Duck just had to live with the knowledge that Minerva could make noises like that and not get to try and be the cause of them?

A kid Duck faintly recognizes as one of the Hornets wanders down the row. He doesn’t seem to notice Duck standing there sizing him up. He’s walking with a limp, but otherwise Duck can’t see any injuries. He watches as the kid grabs a bottle of ibuprofen off the shelf, and then startles as he notices Duck noticing him. He looks at Duck, standing in front of the condoms. Duck can see the pieces clicking together in the kid’s head: Yep, that’s Ranger Duck, getting condoms the day after the world was supposed to end. 

The kid grins at him, slow as molasses. Duck scowls back and shoves the box into his bag. 

Worrying about sex with Minerva, and whether or not he gets to continue having it, is a pretty effective distraction from Duck’s whole ‘surviving the end of the world’ misery spiral. Like, shit, his fellow Pine Guards (Pine Guardians?) are over in another world, but they chose it, right? And they're alive to have chosen it. And– this might have been his destiny and all, but when it came down to it, nobody in Kepler walked into this blind. 

And– not to be a dirtbag or anything, but– Minerva’s  _ chest _ , though.  _ He  _ had sex with  _ Minerva _ . 

Damn if he doesn’t want to do it again. 

  
  


Minerva's in the shower when he makes it back to the apartment, and he starts sticking things in cupboards. He boots up his desktop, checks his email just for something to do. Nothing but spam and a coupon for cat food. He shoots off a couple messages, while he’s at it– Juno checks her email three times a day like clockwork because of her crocheting forums, and somebody's probably keeping an eye on the ancient monitor Barclay keeps at the front desk at the Lodge. He sends an email to Aubrey, too– maybe they have wifi in Sylvain?

"Wayne Newton!" Minerva sails out of the bathroom, one towel around her waist and a second under her armpits. It’s ridiculous and kind of endearing. "Have you acquired the divoted bread?"

“They’re called waffles, and you know that,” Duck says automatically. “And no– we can go grocery shopping later, if you want, but we needed milk." Minerva takes the bag left on the counter and starts opening and closing drawers, putting things away almost entirely at random. Duck bites back a smile. A message from Juno pops up on his screen:

**Shit’s handled at the lodge. Mama says come up tomorrow, take a nap today. glad you aren't dead.**

Duck taps out a smiley face emoticon because he knows it’ll make Juno roll her eyes before turning back to the kitchen, where the clanging of cabinet doors has ceased. “You good, Min?” 

Minerva holds up the box of condoms, one eyebrow arched in amusement. “Groceries?” 

“Oh, goddammit,” Duck says. “Listen, I don’t– it’s cool if you aren’t– 

Minerva shifts her weight, and both towels drop to the floor.

“Uh,” Duck says. 

Minerva raises her other eyebrow.

"Yeah, okay," Duck says, pulling his shirt over his head as he follows Minerva back into his bedroom.

She beats him through the door and throws herself down on the bed, bouncing a little as she stretches backwards, arms over her head. Duck stops in the doorway and stares for a second, appreciates the view. She's tall and toned and just got legs that go on for days. He can see ripples in her skin where scars never quite healed, shiny against the matte of her skin. He wants to know her, to catalog every nick and scar with his hands, with his mouth, with– 

"Have you forgotten what you're to do, Duck Newton?" Minerva says, and Duck realizes that he's just been standing there staring at her with his mouth open like a goddamned hick. Against his will, he feels his cheeks turn pink.

"Just trying to figure out where to start," he says. Mercifully, his voice doesn't break. Minerva's lips twitch.

"I don't think there is a wrong place to begin," she says, "unless you intend to keep standing over there." Duck can take a hint. He closes the space between them, but hesitates at the foot of the bed. Minerva hooks a leg around him and pulls him forward, knocking him off balance and towards her. He throws his hands out to break his fall and gets two handfuls of Minerva, which– sweet.

"Come here," she orders him, and he crawls up her body until he's close enough for her to drag him into a searing kiss. Her fingernails dig into the back of his scalp, pinpricks of pain that make his hair stand on end. She's a bit gentler today than she was before, but she's still liberal with her teeth; Duck makes a startled noise as she nips at his lower lip.

His hands skim down her sides, running down an endless expanse of smooth skin. He can feel the muscle underneath, all that strength gathered up inside her, just waiting until it's needed. She's given him enough strength to hold his own against magicians and monsters and still has so much to spare. Duck’s a big guy even without Minerva juicing him up, but he’s pretty sure she could snap him like a twig, if she wanted. It's dizzying, the idea of all that power. Mountain lions haven't lived in the forest here for over a century, but that's what Duck finds himself thinking of, when it comes to Minerva: beautiful, fierce, deadly.

As if she can hear where his thoughts have wandered, Minerva rakes her nails down Duck's back like claws, scorching lines down his spine. Duck groans, clenches his hands around Minerva's hips. She rolls up against him languidly, and he bucks against her, much less smoothly. She laughs, low and sharp. She runs her hand down his spine again, this time with the flat of her hand.

"Easy," she says. Her voice has dropped into a lower register: rougher, some of the crispness blunted. It almost sounds like she's picking up the Kepler accent. "Come here." The next kiss is gentler, but no less forceful; she rolls her hips again, and this time Duck catches the rhythm of it, grinds down into her. She tips her head back, and Duck acquaints himself with the long line of her neck: the place where it meets her shoulder, the spot just underneath her ear that causes her hips to stutter.

"Duck," she says, eyes screwed shut. When she opens them, they’re almost glowing. It's cool as hell. "You're wearing more clothes than are necessary for this kind of activity."

"You can just tell me to take my pants off," he says.

Minerva takes the approach of yanking at his pants in a fruitless attempt to get him naked while keeping him pressed against her. It's never worked for him before, and it doesn't work now; he pulls himself away to shuck off his pants and boxers and drop them on the floor. Minerva pulls him back down and they make out lazily for long, stretched-out moments. Duck traces patterns into Minerva’s skin, acquaints himself further with the coiled strength lurking just underneath. 

Minerva continues to make liberal use of her nails, sharp flares of pain lighting up Duck’s nerves and sending heat rolling in his gut. 

Minerva had dropped the box of condoms on Duck’s nightstand, and Duck only reaches for them after what feels like hours, once he thinks he might actually die if he doesn’t get inside her. 

“You ready?” She nods. He spends an awkward few seconds fumbling with the wrapper, and then Minerva shifts underneath him and plucks the package out from between his fingers. She waggles her eyebrows at him, which is weird, and he's still laughing at her when she rolls the condom onto him.

"You can't do shit you learned from Aubrey when we're three seconds away from fucking," he tells her, a little breathlessly. "You can't cross those streams."

"I don't know what streams you're talking about, Duck Newton," which is  _ bullshit _ , they watched Ghostbusters two weeks ago, "but I think you'll find that I can do what I want." Duck snorts, lines himself up, guides himself into her as carefully as he can.

Minerva hooks an ankle around his back and yanks him forward again– which, shit, continues to be stupidly hot– and Duck bottoms out in her in one unsteady thrust. God, she's tight and warm and everywhere, and every movement sends zings of pleasure zipping around his body, pinballing off every nerve ending. She looks so damn smug and self-satisfied, and Duck leans forward to kiss that smile off her.

He rolls his hips experimentally and is rewarded with her breath hitching against his mouth. Duck pushes back against the cage of her heels, gives himself a little room to move, then reaches back and settles her ankle back in the small of his back. He thrusts into her again, and this time she moans. Minerva reaches up, wraps a hand around the back of his neck like last night. The other slips down to the place where they're joined. He feels her fingers moving, brushing up against his cock, feels the way she's shuddering at the slow slide.

"That good?" he asks, and Minerva makes a noise that sounds like agreement. Duck watches as she tips her head back, brow furrowed in concentration. Her lips part.

“Harder would be better,” she says, after a moment, and– shit, you don't have to tell him twice.

He rolls back and then snaps his hips forward, and Minerva  _ yells _ . From there on it's fast, frantic; his teeth clack against hers and she bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. He gets a hand on one breast, rolls the nipple between his fingers and sucks the other into his mouth. Minerva grinds up into him, fingers sliding erratically between thrusts. Duck pinches Minerva’s nipple hard and she goes rigid, comes with a shout, shattering apart underneath Duck.

God, it's the hottest thing he's ever seen.

She's still clenching around him when he comes, mouth falling open against her breast as he loses his rhythm, thrusts into her again and again as sparks explode behind his eyelids.

"That was...." Minerva says, and then she groans out a burble of syllables that pretty accurately portrays the mush that makes up Duck's brain right now.

"Yep," Duck agrees, still planted against her chest.

She runs a hand up his spine and Duck hums contentedly.

"Groceries were a good idea," she says, and Duck nods fervently.

  
  
  


That night is less good.

He's back on the spaceship, and Jane is staring at him from inside the tank, and Duck knows it's a copy, it's a trick, but she's staring at him with horror in her eyes. And, oh, fuck, they took Dani, they took her away so they could copy her, what if they took Jane? What if she's up here, what if that's Jane?

Duck slams his fists into the glass, and cracks spiderweb out from the impact, but behind the glass Jane is shattering, exploding into blazing light, and she's screaming, and Duck is pounding on the glass and that's his sister, that’s his Janey, his hands are covered in blood and he doesn’t know if it’s his and  _ he has to get to Jane _ – 

"Duck," a voice says urgently, and Duck bolts upright, heart slamming against his ribs. Minerva's fingernails are digging into his shoulder. It’s pitch dark. He can still hear Jane screaming.

"Did you have a vision, Duck Newton?"

"No," he says. "I don't think, I– fuck, I gotta call Janey."

Minerva looks at him hard for a long second, then nods once and releases her grip on his shoulder. He's out of bed like a shot, going straight for the landline he keeps in the pantry for emergencies.

Jane has gone through three phone numbers in the past decade thanks to a shitbag ex-boyfriend, and it takes Duck long seconds to remember the right number. He fucks it up twice after that, and by the time he finally punches in the right number, he can barely breathe through the tightness in his chest.

Jane picks up on the fourth ring. "'lo?"

"Janey," Duck says. The knot in his stomach unwinds all at once, and he braces himself against the countertop as his knees threaten to give out. "Thank fuck."

"Duck?" Jane sounds groggy. Duck glances at the clock on the stove. 3:37. 

Oops.

"Shit, Jane, I'm sorry. I just–"

"Is everything okay?" Jane's bleariness is rapidly giving away to alarm. "Duck, what– are you okay? Is Mom okay?"

"What? Mom's fine. I'm– Jane. You're good, right? Nothing weird's happened lately? Devin and Nora are good?" Duck clutches the phone to his ear.

"Yeah, Duck, we're fine,” Jane says slowly. Duck can imagine the face she’s making, forehead wrinkled as she works through the puzzle. “Devin would be better if he'd do his math homework, but we're all okay here. What the hell, Duck?"

"God," Duck says. He sits down on the floor, tips his head back to rest on the kitchen cabinet. "Okay. I'm sorry, Jane. Shouldn't have woken you up."

"Duck," she says, and now she just sounds worried. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Duck says. He closes his eyes. "It's been a bit of a week, is all. Nightmare got the best of me."

"DNR working you too hard?" It's wry, but Duck can pick out the concern underneath. 

"I've had a really weird year, Janey-cakes," Duck tells her.

"You should tell me about it. Maybe not in the middle of the night on a Tuesday," she amends, and Duck winces. "But. Duck, you know you can tell me anything."

"You wouldn't believe me," Duck says. The floor creaks, and he opens his eyes. Minerva is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, watching him intently. He gives her a weak thumbs up, and the tension drains out of her. She crosses the hall and lowers herself to the floor beside Duck. He tips his head toward her shoulder.

"You once got me to believe that my teeth would fall out if I kept trying to drink your coffee, Duck," Jane says dryly. "I think you could give me a chance."

Duck," Jane says dryly. "I think you could give me a chance."

"Would you believe it's weirder than that?" Duck asks. Minerva's shoulder is surprisingly comfortable, considering how absolutely jacked she is.

"Does this have to do with the rumors about the feds in Kepler?" Jane asks. Duck frowns.

"Where'd you hear about that?"

"You aren't the only person who stayed in Kepler, Duck," Jane reminds him. "I heard something happened up on the mountain a few months ago, and then the feds set up camp. I've been meaning to call you, see what was shaking."

meaning to call you, see what was shaking."

"It...that’s part of it," Duck hedges. "It's...it's really a lot."

She's quiet for a moment. "Are you okay, Duck?” she asks again. Minerva tilts her head towards Duck's, resting her cheek on his hair. He closes his eyes again.

"I think so," he says, because it’s only been a day and he’s not sure yet. "It's been nuts, and you probably wouldn't believe any of it, but it's over now."

"I want to know about it," Jane says firmly. "Do we need to come up there?"

"Nah, Jane. Kepler's kind of a mess right now."

"Then you should come down here. It's Memphis, Duck, not the Moon."

"I'll think about it, okay? It might be good for me to get outta town for a bit." Above him, Minerva starts. Duck starts to lift his head, but Minerva hurriedly leans back into him. "Go back to bed, Jane. I just needed to hear from you."

"Call me sometime this week," Jane insists.

"Yeah, alright," he says. "Love you," he adds, pressing the phone to his ear like that'll make the message stick better.

"Love you too, Duck," she says, and he doesn't care if she's placating him.

"Tell the kids Uncle Duck says hi."

"Will do. Night."

"Night," he says, and hangs up the phone.

He and Minerva sit on the floor for a minute.

"It  _ is  _ over, right?" He asks at last.

"As far as I know," Minerva replies. Her voice hums against his scalp.

"'S good," Duck says blearily. "I know you're a fan, but I kinda lost my sword, and my karate sort of sucks shit." Minerva snorts.

"Come on, Duck Newton. Back to bed. I'll keep watch."

She helps him to his feet, and if he leans on her a little too hard, she doesn't seem to mind.

  
  


Early the next morning, Duck and Minerva make the trek back up to Topside to find Duck's car. It's still where he left it, parked a few feet into the trees, almost miraculously untouched. There are what look like claw marks scraped into the paint on one side, and Duck traces them with the tips of his fingers.

“I believe Aubrey would call that ‘badass’,” Minerva says dryly. Duck snorts. Minerva wedges herself into the passenger seat and they drive the rest of the way to Amnesty. When the lodge comes into view, it seems like half the town has congregated there. People are gathered into clusters, talking and taking stock. Mama is holding court, Juno and Agent Stern flanking her. Duck figures they have it covered and starts to turn away, looking for something to start helping with, when Juno's sharp whistle pierces the air.

"Duck Newton, get over here," she hollers. Minerva has already disappeared, and when he spots her a second later she’s moving wreckage, heaving a log that three Hornets had been struggling over with one hand.

Juno throws her arms around Duck as soon as he gets within hugging distance. Mama claps him on the shoulder. Agent Stern restrains himself to a single nod.

"You okay?" Juno asks, mouth next to his ear.

"Getting there," Duck says, more honest than he means to be. She squeezes him a bit before stepping back, giving him his space.

"How bad are things looking?" He asks, glancing between the three of them.

"The Lodge got hit hard," Mama says. "I think the Quell was going for 'whatever felt like Sylvain.'"

"Damage is isolated, but anywhere that got hit is pretty thoroughly fucked," Juno adds. "Looks like a freight train went through the elementary school."

"Did you talk to the superintendent about that?" Mama asks Juno. Juno purses her lips thoughtfully.

"Don't think so. I'll tell her to talk to the mayor." She turns back to Duck. "Speaking of. I, uh. I kind of blew up City Hall." Duck blinks at her.

"Well, we're all still here to see you get chewed out by the feds, so that's something."

"There shouldn't be any, uh, chewing out," Agent Stern interjects. "I'm taking point on liaising with our government entities here." He shrugs one shoulder, giving them a rueful smile. "We, ah, want to keep as much of this under wraps as possible, but we owe the people of Kepler a great debt."

"We?"

Stern spreads his hands out helplessly. "The government. The United States? The world? Take your pick." His expression slides into something more serious. "I know I haven't exactly been an ally in your work here, but I want to do whatever is in my power to make things right, and I have the authorization to do quite a bit."

"Uh," Duck says. "Thanks?"

"Let's go find something to help with," Juno suggests, looping her arm through Duck's. "Don't ruin this for me," she hisses as they walk away. "Somebody's gotta pay for all the shit that got broke, and it might as well be the feds. Stern said he might be able to get me a medal out of it and everything." Duck laughs, and Juno steers him down one of the trails heading toward the mountain.

"You doing okay?" she asks again, once they're clear of everyone else. Duck shrugs.

"World didn't end, so I've got that goin’ for me. What's the damage?"'

"Amnesty's in pretty rough shape, some damage downtown. Uh, the gate? Thing? Totally got destroyed, I'm not sure what happened there–"

"I blew it up."

"–but the rest of the–you blew it up?"

"It was that or get sucked out into space," Duck tells her irritably. Juno digests that for a few seconds. They take a bend in the path and Juno drops onto a recently-felled tree.

"Yikes." Duck sits down next to her, and she roots around in her pockets and pulls out a half-empty box of cigarettes. She's been on her 'last pack ever' for a couple years now, and it mysteriously seems to refill every time things go to shit. She offers Duck a cig, and he takes it, holds it up to her lighter until the end flares.

“You okay, though?” Duck asks. He takes a drag, feels the nicotine hit like a wave. Juno hums, head tilted as she works something over.

“Yeah. City Hall was a trip but that was the worst of it.” Her eyes widen. “Oh my God.”

Dread lances through Duck. “What?” 

"You and Minerva hooked up!"

Duck chokes on his lungful of smoke. 

"Goddammit, Juno," he says between coughs. She thumps him between the shoulder blades, cackling at him.

"Sorry," she says, not sounding very sorry at all. "But you did, though, didn’t you?"

"That's none of your fucking business!" Juno rolls her eyes, grinning.

"I mean, shit, Duck, she's a fucking jacked warrior woman from space. I just saw her throw a tree. If you weren't hitting that, I would."

"It's not–it's complicated," Duck says. Juno pauses, turns to look at Duck.

"Why?"

“Why what?”

“Why is it complicated?”

Duck spreads his hands helplessly. “It's like– I dunno, we're friends? But she was like, my teacher? And we all thought we were gonna die, and afterward we weren’t thinking straight– it's probably nothing, is all." Juno makes a thoughtful noise, taking another drag on her cigarette. For half a second, Duck can almost convince himself that they're teenagers again, shooting the shit in the woods and blowing off their responsibilities.

"I dunno if it can be nothing with your psychic alien mentor," she says. "But what do I know, I haven't been on a date in three years."

"I'd still marry you, if you wanted," Duck offers, hauling himself off the log. Juno grinds her cigarette out on the ground, sticks the butt in the pocket of her jacket.

"Then I'd have to figure out my taxes again, and that's not worth the effort.” 

At seventeen, Duck had offered to marry Juno if they were both still single at forty or if her mom wouldn’t get off her back about grandkids. They’d already dated and broken up by then– the sex had been awkward and terrible– but when he’d first pitched the idea, Juno was mid-sexuality-crisis and breaking down in the high school parking lot. Duck never had been good with tears. Anyway, he promised that they could get married and they could probably figure out how to have sex that was less excruciatingly awkward. It had been stupid then and it was stupid now, but bringing it up always makes Juno laugh. It does the trick now; she laughs as she gets to her feet. 

She bumps her shoulder against his as they walk back up the trail, and it feels the same way it always has. With everything that’s changed in the last year, Juno sticking her nose in his business is annoyingly familiar.

When Amnesty comes back into sight, Juno heads toward a cluster of people waiting for their next assignment, and Duck goes looking for Mama. She's at the counter inside, scowling at the broken windows.

"Did you take yesterday off, or did you get pulled into cleanup?" he asks.

"Barclay kept 'em off my back until noon," she says, rolling her head to the side. Her neck cracks with a loud  _ pop! _ "You need something?"

"Yeah," Duck says, shifting uncomfortably. "Who'd we lose?" Mama looks at him sharply.

"Duck, that's not something–"

"If you don't tell me,” Duck interrupts evenly, “I'm gonna go down to the station, and they're gonna be weird about it.” Mama looks at him for a long minute, then sighs, pressing her knuckles against her eyes. She sounds like Barclay should have tried to keep them out of her hair a little longer.

"Jeff Pearson, Mrs. Pearson’s nephew. Couple of the Hornets– Jake’ll know. I can't remember who. Nobody from the lodge. Dolores Adams, her wife runs the gas station on the highway heading west. Couple other people got beat up real bad, but I think they're gonna pull through." 

Mrs. Pearson’s nephew. Shit. He's gotta bring her flowers or something. 

Mama looks over at him, nudges him with her elbow when he won't meet her eyes. "It could've been worse," she says. He thinks she’s aiming for kind. Duck tips his head to the side, makes a face like, ‘ehhh.’ "Duck," she says, prodding him again. "It could’ve been a lot worse. And what we got sure as hell ain’t your fault."

"Yeah, I know," Duck says. "Like, I know it, but I don't feel it, y'know?" Mama makes the same face back at him, and Duck winces. Yeah. Of course she knows.

“Sorry,” he says. "Lemme know if you hear anything about arrangements bein' made," he says at last. "Hornets might not want me to show up, but if I'm welcome, I'd like to pay my respects." Mama nods, a sympathetic twist to her lips. Duck takes a deep breath, closing his eyes against the groundswell of grief that threatens to sweep him off his feet. 

There’s a shout from outside, a loud cracking noise as something comes apart; then, a smattering of cheers. Mama leans up the counter to squint out the window. Duck shifts himself back into gear.

"Okay," he says. One more deep breath. Let’s go. "What can I do to help?" 


	2. Chapter 2

The days pass, one by one by one. It’s a blur of heartache and actual aching shoulders, of cuts scabbing over and Kepler knitting itself back together. Duck gets his first sunburn of the season schlepping rubble as the days get longer and warmer. Kepler might be a ski town, but Duck has always loved summer in the Monongahela.

Minerva is never far from Duck’s side, even more than before. One day she’s up at dawn repairing roofing on Main Street. Another day she’s put on kid-wrangling duty so the summer camp down the road can rebuild their dock. She spars with anyone who asks. She joins the meal train, and once she is summarily excused from cooking duty (Duck doesn’t ask), she delivers meals. 

She’s constantly running through town ferrying supplies and information, making the trips faster on foot than anyone would navigating the roads. Sometimes he’ll hear her sandals pounding against the path and he’ll stop to watch her pass, forehead creased and a toolbox under her arm. If she notices him, she’ll nod without breaking her stride. 

If Duck somehow manages to get through a day without seeing her, he finds Minerva in his bed more often than not. He tries not to think too hard about it.

Duck is kept running, too- between his regular shifts and the reconstruction he’s picked up, he’s been arguing with the Feds about camping season and whether or not they can allow folks in this part of the Forest. That’s a different issue than the argument with Feds they’ve been having about the need to do an ecological study about the  _ goddamn mountaintop  _ that got dropped on town; nobody in their unit has the geology background they’re going to need to assess things, but the Feds are being squirrely about bringing in anyone else on the secret. 

When Duck’s not working, he’s trying to put his town back together. He makes stew for Mrs. Adams. He picks up groceries for some folks whose car got busted. He goes to the funeral services for every person they lost in the fight. 

That’s its own kind of miserable. A couple of the Hornets eye him suspiciously when he shows up for the first service, and Duck hesitates at the door. But then Hollis steps up, makes their way to Duck through the crowd. They look Duck in the eye and shake his hand, and that’s enough for their crew. Still, Duck tends to hang in the back and doesn’t bring attention to himself. 

Barclay shows up at most of the funerals, too, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and wearing the same helpless, miserable face that Duck knows he can’t shake. Barclay usually manages to cajole Duck into a meal afterward up at the Lounge, and they sit with whoever’s there and talk about shit that isn’t ‘this’. It’s nice, for an hour or so, and then they all jump back into the fray. 

In the scant few hours that Duck’s home, usually all he’s up for is getting the three of them (himself, Minerva, Kairi) fed, getting himself clean, and falling into bed and trying not to dream. 

He usually fails.

It’s usually the spaceship dream, with Aubrey or Janey in the tubes. Sometimes it’s watching Ned die and die and die again, the details of the scene filled in from the police reports and Aubrey’s quiet, shaky retelling and his own imagination until it’s like he was there, rooted to the ground instead of miles away across town– 

Anyway. 

It’s usually the spaceship dream, and tonight it’s the spaceship dream again, but this time it isn’t Jane or Aubrey or anyone from Kepler in the tube.

It’s Minerva. 

And Duck turns around to see another Minerva behind him, but she's been impaled by some unseen figure, a sword sticking out of her chest. Duck lunges for her, but her eyes are already going dim as he catches her arm, and they fall to the floor together in a heap. Blood pools on the ground, blooming from the sword in her torso and spattering against the floor beneath her. It's on Duck's hands, soaking into the knees of his pants where he's kneeling next to her, underneath his fingernails. The tube opens with a hiss, and the other Minerva steps out, and she draws a sword just like the one in her chest, and she crosses the floor toward the with those long legs and the same dead look in her eyes and- 

“Duck!”

Duck bolts upward, nearly avoiding colliding with Minerva. It's pitch dark; it takes him a second to clock his surroundings. He's home, in bed. Minerva is crouched over him, the frown barely visible on her face.

"Are you alright?" she asks. Her hand is gripping his upper arm. He covers her hand with his own, still reeling. His hands still feel wet and tacky; he’s afraid to look at where his hand covers hers, afraid of smearing blood across her skin. 

“Yeah,” he says, heart still pounding. After a minute, he says it again. “Yeah.  _ Fuck _ .” He lets his head drop, chin tucking toward his chest. In an oddly gentle gesture, Minerva leans forward to press their foreheads together.

They breathe like that for a minute. Duck tries to let it go, settle into Minerva’s reassuring presence, but Minerva is falling to the floor over and over again, the light in her eyes guttering and dying and it feels like he’s been impaled, too-

“Can I-” he starts, and then he tilts his head up to press his lips against hers. The rush of heat and relief that sweeps through him as she leans into the kiss nearly manages to drown out the dread in the pit of his stomach. Minerva lets him lead, for once: he pushes himself further upright and sweeps his hand along the strong plane of her back. She's solid and safe and  _ here _ , and Duck wants to burn that feeling into his brain. 

"I want to-" he says against her mouth. "Can I, uh-" 

"Whatever you need," she says, and a quiet, punched-out noise gets caught in Duck's throat. She noses along his jawline, lips brushing at the spot under his ear that makes his eyes roll back into his skull. He pulls her in for another searing, desperate kiss. 

Duck mouths along her collarbones, taking his time at the hollow of her throat. She tips her head back, gives him more room to work, and he licks a stripe back down her neck and bites into the meat of her shoulder. She flinches, barks out a laugh, and Duck smiles against her throat. Minerva is alive, alive, alive, how could he have ever thought she was a dream. 

He presses his face into her chest and just breathes- traces the raised edges of scars with his lips- teases at the swell of a nipple until Minerva's shifting impatiently on the bed. She reaches down, sinks her fingers into his hair and  _ pulls _ . Duck moans against her stomach, electricity shooting through his spine and straight to his cock. She hums, considering. Yanks again. Duck whines, high and needy. She loosens her grip slightly, and Duck slides the rest of the way down her body so he can get his mouth between her legs. 

She's slick against his mouth, warm and wet, and when Duck swipes his tongue along the center of her, she arches her hips to press herself into Duck's face. Duck points his tongue, circles it around her clit; Minerva curses, loud and low. She reaches down to card her fingers through his hair, and Duck moans, pushing into her grasp. Miraculously, she understands, curls her fingers against his scalp and pulls hard, maneuvering him into place.

Duck loses himself in the feel of her thighs pressed against his ears, the soft curl of hair below his nose, the ache in his jaw as he works his tongue against her. He brings his hand up alongside his jaw, slips a finger into her alongside his tongue. The sound she makes burns through him, clearing away the last of the nightmare and leaving only this. His heart is pounding in his ears, an unrelenting drumbeat of 'alive, alive, alive'. 

When she comes, Duck's name or a prayer or a curse locked behind her teeth, she grinds against his chin, pulsing around his fingers. For a split second or a heartbeat or a lifetime, Duck's world narrows down to this: the taste of Minerva on his tongue, the wet heat of her, the way she is so brilliantly, vibrantly alive. The way he gets to be here with her in this moment, having her fall to pieces before him. 

Then the moment passes, and Duck is desperately hard in his boxers, barely holding himself back from grinding down against the mattress. He presses one last kiss to the inside of Minerva's thigh, rubs his chin against his shoulder, squirms his way back up the bed toward where Minerva is sprawled out onto his side, breathing hard. She smiles at him, pleased and relaxed, and Duck grins back. 

“You mind if I-” he gestures vaguely southward. Minerva snorts. 

“I think I can return the favor,” she says. She shifts, and in a move Duck can’t quite follow, straddles him. She licks into his mouth, unhurried even as Duck’s mouth goes slack at the combination of her breasts against his chest and her hands skimming down his sides. 

She makes her way down his body, her weight pinning him to the mattress, which is reassuring in a way Duck might have to examine later. When she divests him of his boxers, she hesitates for long enough that Duck’s about to let her off the hook when she shifts her grip on his hips and swallows him down in one smooth motion. 

Duck groans, thrusting into Minerva’s mouth before he can catch himself. Minerva’s grip on his hips is a brand, ten points of searing heat keeping him still. He shudders, his head falling backward. He wants to watch her, wants to catch every detail, but he’s on fire, he’s burning from the inside out.

Minerva’s hands flex against his hips, her tongue curling experimentally as she moves. Duck’s hips twitch again involuntarily and Minerva hums in the back of her throat, which doesn’t help matters at all. She shifts, leaning more of her weight against his hips, forcing him to hold still as she takes him apart. 

Duck’s already overwhelmed, heat coiling at the base of his cock. One of his hands fists in the sheets, the other flailing for Minerva’s shoulder. “Miner- Min, I’m gonna-” he gets out before Minerva presses her tongue against the underside of his cock and it’s all over.

He comes hard, clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle the shout that rips out of him. Minerva doesn’t loosen her hold on his hips, keeping him pinned no matter how hard he tries to thrust into the velvet heat of her mouth. Her name falls out of his mouth on every exhale-  _ Minerva, Minerva, Minerva. _

“God,” he manages, when Minerva finally pulls away. He forces his eyes open, meets her gaze in the dark. She sweeps her thumbs across his hips before letting go and shifting back to her side. If it weren’t for his Chosen One buffs, Duck thinks he’d have bruises there in the morning, Minerva’s fingertips pressed into his skin. 

Minerva wraps an arm around his shoulders, tucking him against her. After a moment, she speaks, her voice a quiet rumble in her chest: “What did you dream of, Duck Newton?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Duck mumbles, his eyes slipping closed. “It wasn’t real.” 

Minerva lets it pass, brushing the hair from his face and settling them back into the covers. Duck falls asleep to the steady drum of her heart. 

A few nights later, after a shift in the forest and another four hours hauling around rubble, Duck drops onto the couch for just a minute while his leftovers are reheating and wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later in the dark. The TV is still on, late-night news running depressing headlines- there are fires in Brazil, some politician somewhere said something stupid, some other politician lied about something heinous. Duck hauls himself up to re-reheat his plate and listens with half an ear to the commentator as he shovels food into his mouth. 

It’s a quiet night. Kairi’s purring at the other end of the couch. The space between his shoulders aches as much as it ever does, and he leans back to press them against the couch. He’s got another shift tomorrow, and yesterday Barclay dragged a promise out of him to come up to the Lodge for dinner. Duck’s drifting, toying with the idea of bailing on Barclay and spending an evening with his good friend the PS3, when something pricks at the edge of his consciousness.

Duck’s eyes snap open. He pushes himself back upright and mutes the TV. The murmur of the talking heads goes silent and he listens hard, adrenaline spiking in his chest. 

There’s nothing but the hum of the fridge and, faintly, frogs croaking outside. 

Still.

Duck stands up, quiet as he knows how to be. He crosses to the door, double-checks the deadbolt. Locked. Kairi’s still asleep on the couch, sprawling into the hollow left from where Duck had been sitting. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. 

Still.

Something’s wrong. He can feel it in the backs of his teeth, feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, but  _ something  _ has changed in the last five minutes, and uneasiness is crawling down Duck’s spine like ice. 

It’s not as reassuring as it could be that Minerva hasn’t emerged from the bedroom; it could be that it’s nothing, or it could be that whatever’s tripping Duck’s alarm already got the drop on her. Duck cracks open the door to the bedroom, heart pounding in his ears. 

And then it makes sense: the reason Minerva hasn’t noticed the problem is because Minerva  _ is  _ the problem. 

Minerva is trembling in her sleep, face twisted up in some awful expression. She doesn't thrash so much as shiver, like she's used to smaller spaces, like she's used to keeping quiet. Her face twitches, and her whole body shudders again. She makes one, tiny, pained noise that echoes in Duck’s ears. 

He eases the door open. “Minerva.”

It’s not much more than a whisper, but in the space between syllables, Minerva wakes. It’s subtle- if Duck hadn’t been watching her, hadn’t already been tuned into that prickle at the base of his skull, he might have missed it. Her eyes don’t open, her face doesn’t relax. Her breath hitches once, but the sigh she releases could just as easily signal a return to more peaceful sleep. 

Duck watches her assess the threat, realize where she is, realize what’s happened, and force herself to relax, all in a handful of seconds. He leans against the door jamb, squinting into the dark. 

“My apologies, Duck Newton,” Minerva finally says without opening her eyes. “Did I wake you?”

“Nah,” he says. “You want to talk about it?”

“Another time, perhaps.” Her eyes open, then, finding Duck unerringly. She stares at him unblinking for a long, long moment. Duck’s pinned by the weight of her gaze.

“I can sit and keep watch, if you want,” Duck says quietly. Minerva would do that sometimes, before the fight: sit with her back to the wall, waiting for monsters to break down their door. She hasn’t since the fight, hasn’t even mentioned it, but also, Duck hasn’t seen this look on her face before.

“That would be…” she trails off. “Yes,” she says, after a moment. “Thank you.”

Duck detours through the living room to turn off the TV and the lights, makes his way to bed in the dark. Minerva shifts over silently. He places himself between her and the door, on top of the covers. Minerva rolls onto her side, facing him. He glances down at her. He can just make out the swirling lines of her scalp tattoos, as his eyes adjust to the dark. He puts his hand between them, resting his weight behind him as he turns to face the door. Beside him, Minerva shifts. He can feel the warmth from her fingertips where they barely brush against his.

“No luck with the Feds on camping, but I think we’re going to have shit figured out for ski season,” Duck says quietly, eyes fixed on the door. “I think Kepler’s gonna get itself along just fine.” 

Minerva’s quiet.

“Me, though, I’ve been trying to figure out what happens next,” he continues. “It’s like- Kepler’s been my whole life, y’know? Even back when I was trying to ignore it, my whole life’s been about this. And now it’s done, and I don’t know how to just… go back to the old shit I was doing.”

The minutes tick by. Duck’s pretty sure Minerva’s still awake, but he doesn’t turn around. 

“I don’t regret being the Chosen One or whatever,” he adds, after a minute. “Just so you know. I just. I don’t know what else there is to me that isn’t just ‘Duck Newton, Chosen One’.” 

“You’ve never been ‘just’ anything, Wayne Newton,” Minerva says quietly. He turns, surprised. Her eyes are open, gleaming in the dark. His fingertips are still brushing against hers. 

"Thanks," Duck says, after a long, long moment. He turns back to the door. There's something hanging in the air, something delicate, fragile, and if he breathes too loud it might break. “I’ve been… I’ve been thinking a little bit about leaving,” he says, surprising himself. He hadn’t been, not in so many words, but now that he’s said it, named the thing sitting uncomfortably across his shoulders, it seems right.

“Where would you go?” Minerva asks. She’s almost whispering, like she can feel the thing in the air, too. 

“I dunno,” Duck says. “There are lots of other places where I could make a difference. Not like, a 'balance of the world' difference, but like. A 'doing my part' difference. Those are the kind of stakes I’m looking for." Something from the news whispers through his mind, and Duck’s brow furrows. “Brazil, maybe.” Minerva makes a questioning noise. “They've been having some fires, the rainforest needs help. And that's the kind of help I can do. That’s the kind of thing I’m good at. Not at fires,” he corrects, after a minute. “Aubrey was the one of us good with fires.” Minerva huffs softly, and Duck grins to himself. 

"I miss her," Minerva says. 

"Yeah, me too," Duck says. "Kepler's too quiet without her and Thacker and–" the grief hits less hard than it used to, but it still catches him square in the chest. "–and Ned," he finishes, once he catches his breath. "Kepler's gonna be okay, but it's never gonna be the same." 

The room is quiet, the only sounds the ticking of the clock and Minerva, slipping into sleep. He shifts down the bed to lay down fully sometime after she starts to snore. "A new start might be good," Duck tells the ceiling. 

When he falls asleep, his dreams are tinged with the soft, brilliant green of the first shoots of spring.

He ends up going to the Lodge for dinner that night, too chicken to come up with an excuse that would hold up to Barclay’s scrutiny. Afterward, he's sipping a beer by the fireplace as Mama holds court when Agent Stern rolls on up beside him, dropping a thick folder in his lap. 

"Documents for your friend," he says, commandeering the chair beside him. He looks tired. "Have her fill those out and get them back to me, and I'll file them with the appropriate bureaus next time I go into the city. There should be, ah, let's see. ID forms, Social Security, everything she would need to open a checking account."

"Passport?" Duck asks. Minerva hasn't said she's interested in going anywhere, whether or not Duck leaves, but she hasn't said that she isn't, either. Stern shrugs.

"Sure, I can make that happen. We'll need a picture of her, though."

"Sure," Duck echoes. Barclay walks by, on one of any number of trips between the conversation and the kitchen. He drops his hand to Stern's shoulder, leaves it there for a second. Stern looks up at him, smiling faintly. Duck blinks. Interesting. 

"Can you imagine Minerva at the DMV?" Barclay asks. They all go quiet for a minute, imagining. Duck snorts. Stern shakes his head. Barclay claps Stern on the shoulder and continues on his way.

When he gets home, he drops the stack of paperwork on the counter. 

"Stern gave me the stuff to get you documents," he calls. Minerva vaults over the couch with frankly impeccable form, landing catlike on the opposite side. She spreads the papers out on the counter, scanning through the fields. Duck boots up his ancient computer and double-checks that the Ethernet cord is plugged in. 

"I don't suppose they'll take Miralaviniax Orbital Body 5 as my birthplace, will they?" Minerva asks. She bites on the end of the pen, then leans down to fill in Duck's address on three separate forms. 

_ ‘Reforestation Brazil’, _ Duck types into the search bar. 

"You showed up at Green Bank on February 19th, if you wanted to use that as a birthday," he says quietly, as results start loading in. Minerva hums, flipping through the papers quickly.

“Surname,” she says, squinting at another line.

“Oh,” Duck says. “Uh. We can try a few on, if you want? I’m sure half the folks we know would be willing to share.” 

_ ‘argoforestry volunteer,’  _ Duck searches in another tab. Google asks him if he was searching for ‘agroforestry volunteer’ instead. 

“Minerva Tarkesian. Minerva... Drake?” Minerva wrinkles her nose. “No, that’s not right.” 

“Juno’s always wanted a sister, you could be a Divine,” Duck offers.

“Hm. No, Newton will suffice,” Minerva says decisively.

_ ‘ngo reforestation inita;ldksg’  _ Duck types. “What?” 

“Is that acceptable?” Minerva asks, her forehead scrunched in confusion. 

“Yeah! No, yeah, of course. Just. You sure?” Duck says. “You don’t have to pick anybody from Kepler if you don’t want. We can make something up for you.” 

“Do you not wish to share your name with me, Wayne Newton?” And now Minerva is leaning over the counter to examine his face. 

“Nah, it’s not that, Min, it’s just.” He doesn’t know  _ what  _ it is, what his problem is here. “I just don’t want you to feel like it’s something you gotta do,” he finishes lamely. “Just ‘cause I got you here, or something. It’s a big commitment, is all.” 

“Hm,” Minerva says. She looks down at the stack of papers. “I appreciate your concern,” she says after a moment. “Agent Stern isn’t expecting these back immediately, is he?” 

“Nah,” Duck says. “You can sleep on it.”

“I will,” Minerva says, looking at him strangely. Duck stares at the computer, pretending to be absorbed in Brazil’s visa process until Minerva moves on. 

_ Minerva Newton, _ he mouths to himself that night in the dark. It sounds right, is the thing. All that time spent trying to leave her behind, and here she is: in his house, in his bed, wanting to take his name. And he’s glad. He likes having her here. It’s just wigging him out. 

He’s not great at family, is the other thing. He’s spent most of his adult life alone, doing his own thing. Calling Mom, calling Jane. Spending time with Juno and the rest of the folks from the Forest Service a couple times a month. It’s just in the last year that he’s scrounged together this weird little family: Leo and Sarah and Minerva; the gang from the Lodge; Aubrey and Ned and Thacker. The last three are lost to him; as for the rest, it’s impossible to completely lose track of someone in a town as small as Kepler, but the things that tied them together are gone. It’s only natural that folks drift apart.

Minerva’s not tied to him anymore, not by a psychic link, not by a shared destiny. Even if he still wants her around– and he thinks he does, actually– he has no right to ask that of her, after all she’s given him. And a Minerva Newton that isn’t part of his family, one way or another, might just tear him apart. 

It takes him all of the next day to work up the nerve to say anything. That next evening, he’s folding laundry in the bedroom while Minerva lounges on the couch with his old Nintendo. 

(At some point during the last few months, Aubrey had introduced Minerva to Tetris, and Minerva had instantly been entranced. 

“We played a game like this as children,” Minerva had said, mashing buttons madly. “This only has two dimensions, though, correct? Do your devices not support 4-dimensional spatial puzzles?”

Duck had resolved to think about it later.) 

The music buzzes quietly. Minerva makes an angry noise under her breath, barely audible from across the apartment. It’s… kind of adorable, actually. 

Damn it. He’s in too deep.

"Hey, uh, Minerva?" Duck asks, fussing with the shirt in his hands. 

"Yes, Wayne Newton?" He can hear her shift to look in his direction, knows without looking that she's craned her neck to try and see into the bedroom from the couch.

"You, uh. You know you don't have to stay here, right?" 

"I have not been staying here! We have gone to Amnesty Lodge, and to the residence of Juno Divine, and I believe tomorrow I will spend some time with Leo Tarkesian so he can teach me the Earth game of Rummy–"

“No," Duck interrupts. "I mean, yeah, sure, but. Here. With me. Or here in Kepler, or whatever.” He's crumpling up the shirt. He folds it and picks up another. He folds three shirts before Minerva replies, clearly puzzled.

“Is there something else that you believe requires my attention?” 

“I– no, I just.” Duck stares down at the pile of laundry. “You don’t have to hang around with me, if there’s something else you’d rather do.” 

The game music stops.

“If you wish to be rid of me, Duck Newton, you need only ask," Minerva says quietly. 

"It's not like that, Minerva, come on," he says. He steps away from the bed. Hesitates. If he looks at her, he's gonna have a hell of a time going through with this. But he has to, because the idea that Minerva’s been sticking around out of some obligation to him has been eating him up all day.

"I just wanted to make sure you knew you had options," he says. "Like, now that my destiny's done and you don't have to mentor me, or whatever." 

"I believed our bond had surpassed that of mentor and ward," Minerva says, and shit, now she sounds  _ upset, _ Duck’s fucking this all up. 

"Shit, Min," Duck says. He gently thunks his head against the doorframe. “You're one of my best friends, you know that. I just don’t want you to feel stuck in the middle of nowhere with me.”

“Are you no longer planning to visit the other forest in need?” 

“I mean– I don’t know. Maybe? That would still be the middle of nowhere– anyway. My point is you don’t have to stay where I am or go where I go,” he says. “If you wanna go travel or find a place that feels more like your old home or whatever, you should do that, is all.”

There’s a long, long moment where neither of them say anything. 

"I will take that under consideration, Wayne Newton," Minerva says, and Duck feels something in his chest crack apart. She doesn't say anything else, though, and after another long minute, the Tetris theme starts playing again. Duck folds the rest of the laundry and shoves it haphazardly into drawers before flopping onto the bed and trying to figure out why it feels like he's drowning.

He must fall asleep before he figures it out, and when he next wakes, the apartment is empty. It’s early; the sun’s not quite up. The other side of the bed is cold. When he looks into the living room, Minerva’s things– the handful of possessions she’s acquired in the months she’s spent on Earth– are gone.

She’s left a note for him in the kitchen, big blocky capital letters filling the sheet.

DUCK NEWTON,

I HAVE DECIDED TO HEED YOUR ADVICE AND SEEK OUT NEW EXPERIENCES ON MY ADOPTED HOME PLANET. I WISH TO EXPRESS MY THANKS FOR OPENING YOUR LIFE TO ME, BOTH IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS AND FOR ALL THESE YEARS. KNOW THAT I AM GLAD TO HAVE FOUND YOU, AND THAT I WISH YOU ONLY THE BEST AS YOU FIND WHERE YOUR NEW DESTINY MAY LIE.

AS AUBREY SAYS, YOU HAVE MY DIGITS.

YOURS,

MINERVA.

Duck looks at the note for a long time. Kairi twines between his feet and yowls when he doesn't react. He picks her up, scratches her under the chin as he reads and rereads the note. 

After what feels like a hundred years, he sets the note back down on the counter. He feeds Kairi. He reaches into the pantry for the phone.

"Hey, Janey," he says when the call connects. "I think I fucked up. That offer to visit still open?" 

  
  


Duck's on the road before the sun’s fully up. He makes a couple of calls- one to Mama, to let her know he wouldn't be up at the Lodge for a couple of days and not to worry; one to Juno, to call out of tomorrow's shift. He throws some clothes in a bag before he goes and pounds on Leo's door. 

"Can you feed Kairi?" he asks, when Leo answers. Leo frowns.

"You got somewhere else to be?" 

"I gotta get out of town for a couple of days," Duck says. "I'll ask Jake or someone up at the Lodge if you can't, but if it isn’t too much trouble–" 

"Yeah, Duck, I can watch the cat," he says, waving Duck off. "Are you okay?" 

Duck snorts, shakes his head. There's a tear ripping through his chest, the same jagged-edged rift that shattered the world. If he stays here much longer it’s going to pull him apart. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just. I need to go." 

"So, you just shook your head there," Leo says slowly. "So I'm inclined to think you're  _ not  _ okay. Is- nobody's hurt, right?" Duck shakes his head again. "Where's Minerva?"

"She left," Duck says, and the rift yawns wider. and understanding dawns on Leo's face. Duck's face must look awful, because Leo reaches out to put a hand on Duck's shoulder. 

"Oh. Oh. Shit, Duck, I- yeah. I'll watch Kairi. I'm sorry, kid. Go get your head straightened out."

"Thanks," Duck says, and then he gets in the car and drives.

There are nearly 800 miles between Memphis and Kepler. The rolling mountains slowly diminish into hills as the sun inches across the sky. The trees stay the same, occasionally broken up by meadows. It’s a beautiful day: no traffic, no construction, just Duck and the trees and the road. He stops in a few faceless small towns for gas, for snacks, for a chance to stretch his legs. They all look like Kepler, and Duck keeps expecting to see her across the street or hear her in the next aisle in the convenience store or turn a corner and– 

He never stops for long, is the point. 

Jane is going to ask questions– had dragged a promise out of him, that morning when he called. He spends an hour trying out various lies and cover stories that’ll sound less crazy than the truth, and then he spends a couple more trying to pull together a coherent narrative from all the disparate pieces. He’s written reports before, but none that involved magic and aliens and Bigfoot, who’s technically an alien that uses magic. 

Jane’s got a little house with a little yard, and Duck pulls into the driveway as twilight’s fading into night. Nora and Devin screech and holler and run around in the yard, and Duck manages to pull himself together enough to be fun Uncle Duck for the hour or so before Jane pushes them bodily up the stairs and into bed, promising that Duck’ll still be there after school tomorrow and that they’ll have plenty of time to play over the weekend. 

“I didn’t realize they were still in school,” Duck says sheepishly as Jane comes back downstairs. She waves a hand at him dismissively.

“I’d pull them out if it weren’t field day tomorrow. They’ve only got a week left, anyway. You’re fine, Duck,” she insists when Duck still frowns. “First time you’ve left West Virginia in a decade, you think I was going to stop you?”

Jane pops open a couple bottles of beer from some little local brewery Duck's never heard of, and they go to visit on the front porch. It's a warm, humid night; the familiar racket of crickets chirping nearly drowns out the less familiar hum of cars down the road. "Alright," Jane says, propping her feet up on the swing, sitting sideways to stare at Duck. "So." 

Duck leans against the porch railing, tired of sitting. “Yeah?” 

“Tell me everything.”

And Duck does.

It’s a long, winding story. It takes a couple hours and a couple beers. Jane listens, mostly, while Duck stares out at the streetlight down the road and talks about the shit he's never said aloud outside Kepler. About Minerva, showing up in his head all those years ago. About Aubrey. About Ned. About facing down monsters. About Minerva, and Leo, and Sarah, and Thacker, and Mama, and Minerva. Jane asks questions, occasionally, but they're smart ones, because she's always been smarter than him:  _ Where did Beacon come from? What was Janelle trying to do with that ritual on the mountain? How often did your visions end up coming true? _

Duck answers them all as best as he can. "You're taking this pretty well," he says at some point, and Jane shrugs.

"Kepler's always been kinda weird, Duck. And I've been talking to Juno some. Some other people, too. More of my class left than yours, but some people stayed. I've gotten a couple calls about the folks my older brother was running around with." Duck snorts, and Jane grins at him, lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, I don’t really miss that part of small-town living.”

They're on their third beers by now, the night finally cooling down. “Okay, next question,” Jane says. 

“Shoot.”

“What’s going on with you and Minerva?” 

Duck spills beer all over himself. “What?” 

“Minerva,” Jane repeats. “I dunno if you noticed, Duck, but you can’t go three sentences without mentioning her.” 

“I–” Duck says, and then stops. “She’s–” he tries again. 

_ ‘I thought she was a dream and then I thought I was crazy and then I thought I’d never be rid of her, and now she’s gone and I don’t know what to do’? _

_ ‘She was my mentor and then she became my best friend’? _

_ ‘She put the world in my hands and then she helped me save it’? _

“You seem like you care about her a lot, is all,” Jane says slowly, when Duck doesn’t reply. 

“Yeah, I–”

Big, tall, warrior-woman Minerva. Badass with no volume control Minerva. Starlight and stone Minerva. Something is coming together before his eyes, something steady and bright and shaped like the curve of Minerva’s smile.

“I think I– shit.” 

_ Shit _ . 

He’s in love with Minerva.

“I think I’m in love with her,” he says.

“Well, yeah, I had gotten that far,” Jane says with a roll of her eyes. “But like, are you dating? Is it just a casual thing? Did you bang it out after the battle?” 

“Gross,” Duck says automatically, taking a long pull from his beer to buy himself a minute. “But yeah.” Jane wrinkles her nose. “You asked,” he points out irritably before dropping his head into his hand. “Shit.” 

“What?” 

“I’m in love with Minerva.” 

“Oh,  _ Duck, _ ” Jane says, putting an unfathomable amount of disbelief into one syllable. “Really?” 

“I thought she was a dream for years, Janey!” Jane rolls her eyes again. “I dunno, we’ve been through a lot together lately. It was just about getting through the next fight.” 

“Yeah, it sounds like it,” Jane says, relenting. "But it sounds like the fight's over now, right?" 

"Yeah," Duck says. "Yeah, it's done." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jane frowning at him.

“So what’s wrong?”

“I fucked it up.” He drops down on the bench next to her. “I think I maybe made her feel like I don’t want her around anymore," he says tiredly.

“Duck,” Jane says again.

"I didn't want her to feel like she needed to keep hanging out with me now that all of our shit was done," he says. Jane sighs, the way she's always done when she thinks Duck is being unbearably stupid. 

"Do you think she might have been hanging around because she feels something for you, too?" Duck shrugs miserably.

"I was just someone she picked," he says. Jane makes a soft, sympathetic noise. She doesn't push any further. She just sits out there with him until they finish their beers, and then she nudges him up the stairs like she was a decade older than him instead of the other way around. 

Duck tries to push it away for the weekend. While the kids are in school, Jane shows him around, and he goes through the whole story again in the light of day. Now that Jane’s pointed it out, Duck catches the traces of Minerva all over the trail that took him from there to here. They go on walks and Nora makes Duck identify every tree. He listens to a lot of blues music, eats a lot of barbecue. Devin shows Duck the new video game he's playing, because Duck still hasn't been able to get him to understand that he knows what the internet is, even if he doesn't use it very much. There’s an ache in his chest that never really goes away, like there’s a cord wrapped around a rib trying to bring him back east. The hurt in Minerva’s voice rattles around in his head whenever he stands still for too long. Jane catches him staring a few times and always nudges him back into motion.

Still, the weekend helps. A weight he hadn’t noticed he was carrying recedes into an ache that’s easier to bear. Duck’s still got family. He’s got Kepler. He’s fought monsters, he’s lost friends, he’s still standing. The world’s still turning, and he’s got the rest of his life to figure out what comes next. 

Sunday night finds Duck and Jane back on the porch. He’s telling her about Aubrey, about her freakishly large rabbit and the dumb sleight-of-hand tricks she would break out with a little encouragement. “You would’a liked her,” Duck says when he finds himself at the end of a story. “Damn, I hope she’s doing okay.” 

“Me too,” Jane says, which is nice. “Question for you.” 

“Yeah?”

“You said Minerva picked you.” 

“She picked someone in Kepler,” Duck corrects. “It just happened to be me.” 

“Sure, but. This year, when she got here. She still picked you.” Duck glances over at her, brows furrowed. “She had Sarah and Leo at that point, right?” Jane shrugs. “She probably wasn’t hanging around your apartment for the cat, Duck.” 

“Don’t talk shit about Kairi,” Duck says automatically. Then he actually considers her last sentence. “We’ve been through a lot together,” he says, testing out the idea. “I just. I don’t want to hold her to something that wasn’t what she was aiming for.” 

"Maybe you should let her make that choice," Jane says archly. Duck rolls his neck, gives her a sheepish grin.

"Yeah, maybe I should. When’d you get so smart?"

“Somewhere around the third year of grad school,” Jane says dryly. She’s smiling, though– the moon is waxing, nearly full, and her teeth gleam white. “You gonna talk to her?”

"I'm gonna try," Duck says. "She might not feel like listening."

"I bet she will," Jane says, hauling herself off the porch swing. "C'mon, you've got a long drive tomorrow."

Duck sends a couple emails from his phone before he turns out the lights, The Forestry Service might have connections for reforestation organizations, he figures, and one group just gives out their director’s email on the contact page. He deletes a bunch of spam, and just as he’s about to sign out, a message pops up from Juno.

**Duck, you dumb shit.**

Duck winces. 

‘yeah, i kinda fucked up,’ he texts back. ‘do u kno if she’s ok??’ 

**I’ve kept tabs on her, she’s fine.**

‘Tell her i’m sorry.’ 

**Tell her yourself.** Duck scrunches up his face at the screen. Yeah, fair enough. He taps his keyboard thoughtfully, but before he can respond, another message appears.  **No bullshit: you okay?**

‘getting there,’ Duck writes. ‘Didn’t ever think about what would happen after saving the world. Can’t go back 2 the way things were.’

**Yeah. You need help figuring it out, just shout.**

**If all else fails we can give that marriage thing a go,** she adds, and Duck snorts. He feels warm, though, a smile tugging at his lips. 

‘Sure :P’ he sends back. ‘thanks junebug’ 

**Say hi to Jane for me,** Juno says, and Duck switches out the light. His sleep, for once, is dreamless.

  
  


Duck wakes with the sun. He steals a thermos of coffee off Jane, hugs her hard, and hits the road before the kids can wake up and beg him to stay. Jane drags a promise out of him to visit again, to not make this a once-in-a-decade experience, and Duck complains a whole bunch but is already thinking about meeting them somewhere in the middle before the summer ends. It’s been good, seeing them. Besides, if he’s serious about going to Brazil, he’s going to need some practice being out of Kepler.

It’s not quite dinnertime when he makes it home. He knocks on Leo’s door to let him know, lavishes some attention on Kairi, and then, before he can lose his nerve, drives up to the Lodge. 

Mama yanks him aside before he can get more than two steps into the lobby. “You wanna explain why I’ve got a new and exciting kind of alien looking for boarding?” 

“Oh, good, she  _ is _ here,” Duck says. “I kinda figured, but–” Mama’s expression is hard. “I fucked up,” he says bluntly, opting for the straightest path through. “I don’t know what the fuck my life looks like with no destiny bullshit in it and no Pine Guard stuff to think about, and I took it out on her.” 

Mama looks at him with that same hard expression for a minute. Duck forces himself to hold still, to look her in the eye. She must find what she’s looking for, because her expression softens and her grip on his forearm loosens. 

“Listen a minute,” she says. “You don’t stop being a member of the Pine Guard, alright? You’ve got me, and you’ve got Barclay. I dunno how much help we’d be with the destiny stuff, but with the rest? You’ve got us. Look at me,” she says, shaking Duck’s arm a little. “I mean it. You belong here same as Aubrey did.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Duck says. “I mean, I guess.” 

“Give it a chance,” Mama suggests. “I miss her too,” she adds, and they share a rueful smile. “Try room three.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Mama says, and then she lets him go. 

  
  


Duck knocks on the door, shuffling his feet in the hall anxiously. There’s no response, and Duck is about to go check the dining room when the door swings open. And– the thing about Minerva having spent all those years alone on her planet, talking to her chosen ones through a featureless projection is– the thing is, her face is like an open book. So Duck watches her face cycle through surprise, hope, apprehension, and wariness in the handful of seconds before she manages to school her features into something carefully neutral.

"Come to Brazil with me," Duck blurts out. "Also, I'm sorry. Also, I think I'm in love with you.” He takes a beat. “None of that came out the right way."

Minerva blinks at him. "I'm sorry," Duck says again, helplessly. "Can we- shit, Minerva, can we talk about it?" 

"I- yes. Come in, Duck Newton," she says, opening the door all the way. He shuts the door behind him and stands awkwardly in the entryway, hands jammed in his pockets. Minerva sits down at the edge of the bed and gestures for Duck to join her. He takes the chair at the desk, spins it around like he's on some goddamned after-school special and straddles it backward. If he sits down next to her, he's going to try and kiss her, and they’ll be right back where they started.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t want you around,” he starts. “And I figured out why I was being so weird about you borrowing my name.” 

“Juno Divine informed me of the significance your culture places on surnames–” Minerva starts, but Duck shakes his head, and she falls silent. 

"I, uh. I know I was just kind of a person you picked. And I'm glad you picked me and all, but your life has been tied to following around the gate for I dunno how long. And now that it's all over, I want you to do whatever you want to do without feeling like you’re tied to me." 

"Wayne Newton, I-"

"No, wait, lemme finish," he interrupts. "If I don't say it, I'm gonna chicken out." Minerva obligingly falls silent. Duck drags his gaze up to meet Minerva's eyes. 

"So I know you ain't tied to me anymore and that I just said you should do whatever you wanna do, but. I don't want you to leave," he says all at once. "If you gotta find your own bliss or whatever I'll respect that, but, I, uh." He falters, takes a deep breath, blurts out the rest in a rush: "I'll follow you anywhere, if you'll let me."

Minerva's quiet. Duck shuts his eyes, lets his head drop onto the back of the chair. "I don't want you to feel obligated or nothin’," he says tiredly. His voice reverberates against the wood. "I just thought you should know."

"I know that in my choosing you, Wayne Newton, I changed the course of your life," Minerva says, more quietly than Duck's ever heard her. Duck lifts his head. "Let me finish," she says before he can interrupt. "I let you say your piece, let me say mine." Duck nods. She graces him with a quicksilver smile, there and gone and tinged with something Duck can’t quite read. 

"After our final battle, I promised myself that I would remain neutral in whatever actions you decided to take from then on. It wasn't until our, ah, conversation the other night that I realized- through my own inaction, I was still influencing your choices." She pauses, and Duck watches her carefully put together her next sentence. "I wanted to give you the choice, Wayne. To pursue a life without me, if you so chose."

"We're a couple of idiots," Duck says. "We both want each other to be happy, right?" Minerva nods. Duck swings himself around the chair, drops onto the bed beside Minerva. Their knees touch. "Then let's just- let's just do that." 

"What do  _ you _ want, Wayne?" Minerva asks. Duck puts his hand over hers. That question’s been tumbling through his head all day, all the sharp edges wearing away until the answer revealed itself, simple and solid and true. 

“You.” 

Minerva smiles, slow and fond. 

"I really want to kiss you, now, too," Duck adds. The smile breaks into a laugh, and Duck leans in.

Minerva meets him halfway, and the kiss is slow, unhurried, deeper than any of their late-night encounters. Duck surrenders himself to it, lets himself get lost in lips and teeth and tongue. He reaches out for her, finds bare skin and hard muscle, can't stop the moan that bubbles up in his throat when Minerva pulls him closer. 

in.

Minerva meets him halfway, and the kiss is slow, unhurried, deeper than any of their late-night encounters. Duck surrenders himself to it, lets himself get lost in lips and teeth and tongue. He reaches out for her, finds bare skin and hard muscle, can't stop the moan that bubbles up in his throat when Minerva pulls him closer. 

"I want you to come with me to Brazil," he says between kisses. "We can plant trees, and make things instead of killing 'em, but you can still fight shit if you want–" he breaks off with a gasp as Minerva bites at his collarbone. "Or we can go somewhere else, if you didn't want to see the Amazon, but I wanna do something that’ll make a difference–"

"Wayne Newton, do we need to make travel plans just now?" Minerva asks, lips brushing against the shell of his ear. "Because I'd really like to be having sex with you instead." 

"No, yeah, let's do that," Duck agrees. Minerva bites down and he swears so loud he hears someone laugh outside. 

She shoves him over, and the force of his back hitting the mattress leaves him breathless. Or maybe it's just Minerva, climbing on top of him, pressing him into the mattress like he's something she wants to keep. There's four layers of cloth between them and it's too much, he wants to feel her, but he also thinks he might combust if he does. It's so intense: Minerva above him, looking down at him. It's something he's never thought he could have but it's so  _ right. _ He never wants to fight again, but still: if she asked, he'd fight a hundred wars to keep this.

"I said I was with you till the end, Wayne Newton," Minerva says, putting a hand on his cheek. It's almost tender, almost possessive. "Did you not believe me?"

"I thought we were thirty four seconds  _ from _ the end," Duck replies, leaning into the touch. "I thought it was just one of those things you said!" Minerva laughs. She pats his cheek gently, and Duck leans up to kiss her again.

They make out like teenagers, sprawled across the bed, fully clothed, all the lights on. It's pretty great. It's even better when Minerva gets impatient, strips off her clothes, yanks Duck's off too. 

Through some miracle or another, there’s a condom tucked into Minerva’s bag. Duck isn’t going to question it when it means Minerva’s climbing back on top of him and slowly guiding him into her. Duck arches up into her, small of his back lifting off the bed. Minerva pushes him down, leaning forward to cover him with her body. She presses her forehead against his. 

"The first time I chose you, Wayne Newton, it was a stroke of luck," Minerva murmurs. Duck closes his eyes at the reminder, and she makes a soft noise, stroking his hair until he looks at her again. "Believe me when I say I am choosing you now _. _ ” 

She starts to move again, slowly, sitting up enough to give herself leverage, but close enough to kiss Duck again and again and again. He strains up against her, grasping at any part of her he can reach. Minerva pulls his arms away gently, guiding them back to the mattress. She puts one hand around a wrist and squeezes, just hard enough to hurt. A shudder rips through Duck. His other hand fists in the sheets. 

“My Chosen,” Minerva says, in that same steady voice. Her grip on his wrist doesn’t budge. “My champion.” Duck rocks up into her, heart racing, breath catching in his chest. “My Duck,” she says, and she’s beaming, and her eyes are starting to glow, and Duck wants to live in this moment forever– 

Minerva pauses. Duck presses his tongue to the backs of his teeth to stop the whine from escaping his throat. "I can send more than just strength through our connection," she says. "Would you– with your permission, I want–" Duck nods frantically. Minerva closes her eyes, furrows her brow. One corner of her mouth curls up, and then it hits Duck like a sledgehammer. He can feel what she's feeling, and she can feel what he's feeling, and he can feel her feeling his feelings, and it goes on and on on.

Duck can't contain it, it's going to break him apart. He bucks underneath her, and Minerva leans in, presses her weight against Duck's wrists. Duck is pinned and surrounded and safe and loved and  _ sofuckingclose–  _

He comes harder than he ever has in his life, Minerva's name in his teeth and her grin stamped on the inside of his eyelids and her hands tangled in his. Minerva's not far behind him, grinding against him fiercely until she comes to a shuddering halt, letting out a wordless cry as she collapses against him. 

“There’s no way everybody didn’t hear us,” Duck says, once he finally manages to catch his breath. Minerva rolls to the side and places her head on his chest. The tattoos on her scalp are still fading. 

“Nope,” she agrees, popping the p.

They’re going to need to talk about it. About closing the door on everything their lives have been built around. About what happens next. If the people they are outside of the things they’ve faced together are even compatible. 

It can wait. 

  
  


Life goes on. 

Duck gets in contact with some folks from Brazil. Juno starts to make some noise about coming along. Minerva continues a one-woman campaign to befriend everyone in Kepler. Barclay’s been teaching her how to drive. 

Once a week, Duck goes up to the Lodge on his own and has a drink with Mama and Barclay. Some other days, he and Minerva and Leo spend some time together. Jane has started calling to chat when she’s got a long commute to kill. All in all, Duck’s a hell of a lot less lonely than he was, before. 

When Duck gets home from a shift one night, Leo's waiting for him in the parking lot, lounging around with a beat-up paperback and a beer. 

"Listen, before you go in there," he says as Duck approaches, "it was her idea, okay? I was just here to supervise." 

"What," Duck says flatly. Leo smiles at him, something crooked and loose. 

"I'm glad you two figured it out," he says instead of answering. He shoves the book under his arm and heads for his own apartment. Duck watches him go and eyes his own door with trepidation. 

"You've faced down monsters," he says under his breath, shaking out his shoulders. "Whatever the hell's going on in there is nothing." 

There's... a little smoke. It's fine; Minerva's got the window open and the fan on blast. There are several candles on the counter, and his computer's shitty speakers are blasting a song he thinks he last heard at prom. Minerva herself is wearing a tux, jacket and crisp white shirt and all. She's got a black bowtie sloppily tied around her neck; it kind of makes Duck's brain short out. 

"Duck Newton!" Minerva booms, easily drowning out the music. "I meant to surprise you! I have been discussing your courting rituals with our beloved friends Leo Tarkesian and Juno Divine, and they suggested a romantic meal!" 

"They're not  _ my _ courting–" Duck shakes his head, gets back on track. "What'd you make?" 

"I attempted to prepare a Shepherd's Pie," Minerva says, frowning at the oven. "It seems the shepherd and I do not agree." Duck snorts, rounding the kitchen island to take a peek. 

"Yeah, that's probably not salvageable," he says after a minute. "I appreciate the thought, though, Min, don't get me wrong." He tilts his head and she leans down so he can press a kiss to her jaw. "Wanna see what they've got cooking up at the Lodge? 

"That would be good," she agrees, putting an arm around his waist. "My apologies, Duck Newton." He kisses her again, just for the hell of it.

"I don't really get our courting rituals either," he confesses, and Minerva laughs. 

Duck cracks the window a little further and makes sure all the candles are out. They walk out of the apartment, and Minerva locks the door with the extra key Duck found for her underneath his potted fern. Leo sees them go, lifts his hand in a wave. Minerva takes Duck's hand, squeezes it  a little too tight. 

Together, they make their way up the mountain. 

**Author's Note:**

> When I sat down a year ago, I certainly didn't mean for 'Duck and Minerva need to have post-battle sex!' to turn into something about family and loss and moving forward, but here we are.


End file.
